


Bang the Doldrums

by hellskitchensmurdock



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e15 Revelations, Episode: s02e18 Jones, Episode: s03e16 Elephant's Memory, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Spencer Reid, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, No Dialogue, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person, POV Spencer Reid, Spencer Reid-centric, Spencer's not thriving sometimes and other times he is its kinda a nice balance kinda this time, TW:, because i Suck at dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:41:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29020623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellskitchensmurdock/pseuds/hellskitchensmurdock
Summary: Not all good things must end, but this one did.
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Ethan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27





	Bang the Doldrums

**Author's Note:**

> hello im back with another fic im kinda on a writing roll lately today i literally started writing and just wanted to keep going so I finished this so here it is !! i never thought this day would come, but i have finally written a fic where the ship is front and centre. im also surprised that reid/ethan is the ship im writing but here we are i guess. 
> 
> this was inspired by a tumblr post i made, basically saying that bang the doldrums by fall out boy gives me reid/ethan vibes. i had already been thinking of writing this when other people agreed i thought well I'm Going To Have To Do This Now Aren't I? while this was the inspirations there ended up not being that much reference to the actual song because i didn't want it to really be like a songfic? but anyways, this is my first really ship fic and i had no idea what i was doing but i wanted to share so i hope you enjoy :)
> 
> spoilers for the episodes in the tags and trigger warning for stuff in those episodes including: drug use, kidnapping/torture and bullying. if any of this stuff will effect you please don't read this.

Conversations from the hallway beyond your door blur together as you watch your phone on the nightstand. It’s silent, still, and you can feel it closing in on you. You tried calling him, but he never picked up and now you are waiting on him to call you back. You want to hate the man who is putting you through this never-ending agony, but your heart fondly clenches every time you think of him.

Ethan left you, and all that is left is a goodbye note, just like your father. You should hate him for it, but all you hate is what he did because you can still feel his comforting arms and soft, whispered love confessions floating in the air.

The note is short; it’s filled with a passion for music and a plan for heading to New Orleans. The words are beautifully cryptic; you think you wouldn’t understand what it said if you didn’t know Ethan. It almost worries you, but you know him well enough to see through it. You can see the regret and guilt seeping through each word so well he may as well have written what he meant.

In your mind, you can see his surprisingly gentle cursive turn rough as he writes _I don’t want to leave you, but this is for the best._ You don’t believe him. Distantly, you think that maybe you were never meant to know that, that Ethan had never meant for you to see through the smokescreen constructed from steel in a way you are so familiar with. Of course, you are; you have spent your whole life bottling everything up and locking it away.

Gideon always says that you are picking profiling up quickly, quicker than anyone he had ever seen. Maybe that’s why you saw through the carefully crafted verses that remind you of the poetry your mother used to read to you.

It had been one day of FBI training, and he left you behind for a new beginning. You think he planned this.

As you go to classes the note follows you as if the ink has seeped into your skin and the words curve around your neck, arms, stomach, legs; it embraces you just as Ethan once did and all you want to do is scrub so hard that the cursive and bitterness swirls down the drain. You remember the time he drew hearts on your arms with his sister’s stolen lipstick; and how you were both laughing when you wiped it off.

Maybe that would’ve been a better goodbye note. Maybe it would’ve hurt less.

**-**

You think if your mother could see you she would give you one of her soft toothless smiles as her eyes burst with pride. She’d walk over and smooth down your hair and insist that you fasten the top button of your shirt and straighten your tie.

She isn’t here. She is back in Las Vegas and you never stop wishing, hoping, praying to a god that there is no quantifiable proof of that she is okay. 

Instead, you stand in front of a mirror; alone. You run your fingers through your hair, trying to tame it but in the end, it doesn’t matter because you know the only person who’s here and whose opinion matters to you will think you’re beautiful either way.

Your purple shirt is slightly creased because your iron is old and cheap and breaking, but it’s good enough and you cover the worst of it with a patterned sweater vest you bought after months of saving up. 

Ethan takes you to a diner and you would feel too dressed up if this wasn’t what you wore every day. Ethan insists he pays but, like you, he is eighteen and living away from home trying to get through college, but in the end, what matters is that you are with each other.

It’s dark when you finish and you decide to get a taxi back home.

The checkers embrace you as the driver in the front seat pays no mind to your rambling, and you pay no mind to him either; you are entirely focused on your own words and the sparkle they bring to Ethan’s eyes. He’s the first person, aside from your mother, who doesn’t shut down your knowledge but instead engages it.

It’s taking effort, but you manage to keep your voice calm as you explain the mathematics behind the music. It’s your favourite thing to talk about because it combines the two things you both love most. Ethan just finished a music degree, and you love the way numbers and statistics can’t lie.

They can be complicated, but they can’t lie.

Less complicated than love, but as you watch Ethan’s eyes shine from street lights and happiness, you know that’s half the beauty of it. You have never felt as safe as you do leaning on Ethan’s shoulder, seatbelts barely on, and sharing your knowledge with the man you love.

Here is when you first realise that you could spend the rest of your life with him.

Here is the first time you let yourself hope that it could be possible.

**-**

He’s like you.

You realise this quickly when you meet him for the first time at eleven years old and in your junior year of high school far too soon. You aren’t the only kid genius anymore, and you think things might start to get better.

You’re wrong.

His name is Ethan and they bully him too, but he’s not as talkative, as awkward, as annoying as you are, so they tend to leave him alone. Besides, they’ve gotten used to you, chosen you as their favourite toy as if they were dogs.

You’ve read enough to know that as soon as they break you, they’ll go to Ethan next. They’ll beat him, steal his books, shove him in lockers the moment you break. In the same moment, you realise this, you also realise that you will not break.

You can’t break, or else he gets it.

You nearly do. You always feel close to it, but making sure your only friend doesn’t get hurt and being the sole provider for you household gives you an easy distraction, but you can’t distract yourself from this:

The heat that slowly fades as the sun dips behind the horizon, the burning of the rope digging into your wrists and ankles and that of shame and tears on your cheeks. The laughs of your bullies echo in your mind when you’ve given up begging and they’ve all gone home, bored. 

You nearly break when you think how merciful they were for leaving your clothes strewn over the muddy football field.

Your mother doesn’t notice. You don’t blame her; she’s sick. Ethan does. He notices the stares, the smirks. He notices they're pointing and whispering when they usually ignore him until they are ready to use him as their punching bag. He asks what happened, and doesn’t push you when you refuse to tell him, he just tells you he’s always by his side.

He is.

You are two boy genius’ from Las Vegas, growing up far too fast but you have each other, and that’s the best gift either of you could ask for. Maybe you are following him, or he is following you, but you both end up at Caltech doing the first of what you know will be many degrees at the young age of twelve.

Four years and three degrees later, he’s still by your side with four degrees of his own. Ethan has other friends now, but he never forgets about you. You prefer staying alone in your shared dorm with your head in a book, or a letter, or an old Star Trek episode. 

You talk to people, but even after leaving Las Vegas behind, you can’t bring yourself to trust anyone enough to call them your friend. You like things this way, it’s good, it’s peaceful, you aren’t constantly looking over your shoulder or waiting for the next attack.

Until Ethan alludes to something, and it terrifies you. You studied this in your psychology degree but to feel it? That was something you didn’t know about. What if you hurt him? What if you think you feel it but you don’t?

You know you are bisexual, that isn’t what scares you. You’ve never had to commit to anything more before, and rationally you know he hasn’t either. But your heart stutters and your stomach flutters when he laughs, an uncontrollable grin spreads across your face every time he enters the room.

_Come hell or high water._

April 14th was such an ordinary day until Ethan kissed you.

**-**

You thought maybe you would be one of the lucky ones, that you would stay with the first person you fell in love with. You hoped this from the moment you knew, without a doubt, that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with him.

_How foolish of me_ , you think as you move your pawn to c4. 

Gideon doesn’t need to know you are killing the part of yourself that believes you and he were better as lovers than friends.

**-**

He’s sitting across from you, and after all this time he still has the same glow in his eyes, except now they seem brighter behind his concern. You learn that while he left, he never stopped caring about you.

You don’t forgive him.

You understand that he was battling his own demons, but you still don’t.

You aren’t sure if that’s because you are still angry or because you no longer possess the capacity to forgive anything in an unforgiving world controlled by an unforgiving God. In this world, all you have control over is Dilaudid and without even trying, Ethan is making you realise you don’t.

But you do have control over whether you go back to work or not. You think you hope you do. Your sips turn to mouthfuls and one drink turns to two, three, four and you’ve never been good at handling alcohol and the drugs aren’t helping.

Ethan wraps an arm around your waist and you remember how safe you used to feel in them. You haven’t felt safe since Tobias-

Charles-

Raphael dragged you from a cornfield by your ankles.

They burn like the ropes from when you were twelve.

Once you reach Ethan’s apartment and he grabs you a glass of water, he asks you what happened, and you can’t hold it in. You tell him everything; the unholy trinity of your torturers and their fists, drugs and guns. You tell him about God’s will and you question if fate is real and that’s why you are destined to suffer in the unrelenting aftermath.

_If Revelations is the final book of the bible, why did I survive?_

He doesn’t have an answer.

Tears stream down your face and, as Ethan wraps you in his arms, you feel safe for the first time in months. Safe enough to relax your shoulders, to not wait for the next hit. You don’t think about how this won’t last.

Ethan doesn’t know what to say as you empty the bullets from your gun and hold one up. You tell him it’s God’s will, and he asks what you want to do with it.

Nothing is better as you watch it fall from his apartment window and think that once upon a time Ethan would’ve been able to say all the right things.

You spend the night, and in the first moment of clarity you’ve had in months, you realise it. You realise that when this started your gravestones were already half engraved; just as life is, the end of your relationship with Ethan was always inevitable. You never had any control over it.

You never had any control at all.

_-_

Graduation is coming up, and you are still deciding what to do next year. Both you and Ethan are in the final stages of finishing your psychology and sociology BAs, and while you are both staying at Caltech, you are going in different directions.

Ethan’s set on music, and you’re happy for him because his passion is contagious. You prefer writing to sound, but nothing is more beautiful than the jazz piece’s Ethan plays on his cheap keyboard at 3 am.

You can’t decide between pursuing a doctorate in maths or chemistry, and you keep putting it off. As you fret over the decision, you don’t notice Ethan’s soft smile. You ask him for advice and he pretends his heart isn’t fluttering just as yours is.

Neither of you knows the other loves you back yet.

He suggests you make a pro and cons list, or to sleep on it, or to choose one at random and do the other later. God knows you have the time and enough student debt already. He then suggests a better idea: midnight ice cream run, because neither of you are very good at sleeping.

Ethan pays. He gets mint while you get vanilla. You feel invincible as you walk around the city in the middle of the night, the wind pushing your hair back off your face.

Its things like these that you imagine are your version of love songs; ice cream runs, soft jazz at 3 am, whispers of knowledge shared in the back of taxis. Your heart aches every time you are reminded he doesn’t feel the same.

There’s still time before you realise you are wrong.

Your unrequited love songs only make you feel so alive because it’s Ethan with you. It wouldn’t be the same if he wasn’t the one by your side walking down neon streets or pulling all-nighters in the library and spending the time whispering and giggling instead of studying.

You know he’ll stay by your side as a friend, so you keep your love songs in the back of your head and never take a day with Ethan for granted, even though in the moments where your love songs do exist, the two of you have forever.

**-**

Ethan never calls you back.

**Author's Note:**

> well i hope you enjoyed that. although it's not usually what i write i did actually enjoy doing this so i hope you enjoyed reading it :) if you wanna find me on tumblr and watch me yell about criminal minds, prodigal son and occasionally british comedians then my username is @heathridgemanor


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